The present invention relates to a mailable card and more particularly to an improved mailable card formable upon receipt into one of a wide variety of self standing locked pedestal display easels and three dimensional devices.
Mailable postcards, greeting cards, display cards etc. which were formed by folding along designated lines into self standing easels have been known and used for many years. An early example of "personalized" mailable post cards was found in U.S. Pat. No. 1,208,391 to Simmonds. Therein, a picture or display portion was centrally positioned in the cards, an inverted U-shaped top portion of the card was separated from the picture portion by a die cut, enabling the top portion to be folded backward to provide a self standing easel for the picture portion. A personalization portion of the card carrying a name and/or salutation was located below the picture portion to provide a caption.
An example of a mailable display card device formable into a vertically standing internally braced prism was found in U.S. Pat. No. 2,407,592 to Walthen. Therein a sandwich of folded sheets was formable into the prism to provide a graphic display area on a major exposed surface thereof. The graphic display was entirely hidden from view while the device remained in the collapsed sandwich. Also, most of the card material was devoted to bracing and supporting the display surface which placed a premium upon the area thereof.
In recent years "personalized" mailable greeting cards displayed vertically in racks have enjoyed wide popular commercial acceptance. Such cards have characteristically included a name printed thereon and some form of salutation included in connection therewith e.g. "Greetings from BILL" or "Greetings to SUE". In practice such cards have been marketed in groups having a standard salutation with each card of the group bearing a different name and with the group sufficiently largs so that most common names were included, thus enabling selection of a desired name as well as salutation. Those cards have had the name printed at or near the top thereof, so that when the cards were placed in commercial display racks having tiers, at least the name on each outermost card would be plainly visible. Typically, the cards would be arranged so that the names were in alphabetical order. Thus, the shopper could rapidly locate the card having the desired name printed thereon. A drawback of such cards was that they were not formable into selfstanding display devices without incorporation of additional support elements. Another drawback of such cards was that the greeting and name appearing at the top of the card detracted from the underlying picture or display content. On the other hand the early post cards of the type described above as illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 1,208,391 were not capable of display in tiered racks because the printed name was below the picture.
The foregoing and other limitations and drawbacks of prior art cards are overcome by the improved mailable card embodying the principles of the present invention, the objects and summary thereof now following.